Potential Art Bargains on the Block

By Richard C. Morais

Twenty-two years ago, Arthur Goldberg, a partner at the asset manager Neuberger & Berman, was tasked with building a contemporary British art collection for his employer. The wizened Goldberg had followed in the footsteps of Roy Neuberger—himself a pioneering collector of cutting-edge art—and acquired, over a period of 30 years, a deep knowledge of the contemporary British art scene.

Courtesy of Christie’s

The catalog reproduction of this Franz Kline work of 1955, Untitled, does not do this painting justice. Therein a buying opportunity for a painting estimated to sell for $4 million on Nov. 14th at Christie’s.

The timing was perfect. Just 18 months earlier, in August 1988, a 23-year-old art student at the University of London’s Goldsmiths art college had bypassed the traditional galleries and organized with friends a warehouse show called Freeze. The impudent student was Damien Hirst, of course, and Freeze was the opening salvo of a generation of entrepreneurial British artists who upended the international art scene.

I briefly met Goldberg, then 63, shortly after Neuberger & Berman tapped him to build its collection. Goldberg had purchased 20 British works for his firm, including those of contemporary British artists like Anish Kapoor, Gary Hume, and Richard Long. Goldberg rarely spent more than $10,000 on a work. The sole exception was the $23,000 he paid in 1994 for Hirst’s We’ve Got Style.

The collection he built for Neuberger & Berman for tens of thousands of dollars (and that ultimately disappeared into the ill-fated Lehman Brothers, which acquired the firm in 2003) would probably be worth millions of dollars had it been kept intact. But I will never forget what Goldberg told me back then. You need money to collect art, he said—just not too much. Say what? If you aren’t on a tight budget, he explained, you will overpay for “important” works and never develop the eye necessary for catching important artists before they become household names.

Goldberg, in short, was art’s active value investor, and I hugely respected him. He looked for low-cost works from little-known but fast-rising artists, as well as important but undervalued works from established artists who had temporarily fallen out of fashion.

Now flash-forward. November is the height of the auction season, of course, and I recently stopped by Christie’s New York shop. On Nov. 14 and 15, the auctioneer is bringing the hammer down on a total of 595 “Post-War and Contemporary” works.

Christie’s has turned over its prime salesroom real estate to the heavy hitters. That includes Andy Warhol’s Marlon (lot 14, estimate $15 million to $20 million) and Statue of Liberty (lot 35, $35 million); Franz Kline’s Untitled (lot 17, $20 million to $30 million); and Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (779-2) (lot 15, $12 million to $18 million). But twenty years later Goldberg’s voice was ringing in my ear, and so I bypassed these major works and picked (highly subjectively) what are potentially attractive “value” deals in November’s high-art hootenanny:

Gilbert & George: Mugger. Lot 504, Nov. 15, Afternoon Session. Estimate: $50,000 to $70,000. Not Gilbert & George’s strongest work, yet the presale estimates suggest that some lucky person might snag a deal for this fairly large, four-paneled piece of mugger tabloid headlines. It’s part of a recent series of collages. You need to look at relative things, here. When you think that some minor artists in Lower East Side galleries can demand $10,000 or $20,000 a work, a substantive piece with a low-end estimate from this world renowned artistic duo looks like value.

Franz Kline: Untitled. Lot 21, Nov. 14, Evening Session. Estimate: $3.5 million to $4.5 million. Black, white, or gray works generally don’t reproduce well in catalogs—they look flat and dull—and for that reason rarely attract bids from the public shopping via catalog. That’s a buying opportunity for a collector with a refined eye. Christie’s has countered this reproduction problem by putting Kline’s important monochrome work on the catalog’s cover. But considering that this “major” work (lot 17) is estimated at $25 million, his “lesser” work (lot 21) at $4 million looks like a relative bargain. The catalog simply does not do this painting justice. Like powerful Japanese calligraphy, the active black brush strokes leap furiously off a calm canvas. It took my breath away, and I preferred the proportions to Kline’s major work.

Richard Prince: Untitled (de Kooning). Lot 51, Nov. 14, Evening Session. Estimate: $400,000 to $600,000. This work by Prince is of a couple sitting in chairs, naked, their bodies in part realistic, in part blurred into cartoonish Willem de Kooning–like hands and feet. It is, of course, Prince’s homage to the master painter, and the couple on the acrylic green canvas exude raw sexual and artistic energy.

Prices for Prince’s works have risen 1,296% this past decade, according to Artnet, and that means caution is called for. While 32 of his works sold at auction so far this year, another 19 failed to sell, suggesting that princely estimates have run smack into reality; other works in Prince’s de Kooning series have not been exempt from the general price softening these last few years. But Prince’s works have periodically suffered price dips over the last two decades -before continuing their longterm upward march.

More importantly, this particular work is so powerful it’s well worth reeling in at the right price, and the poor results at the Nov. 7 Impressionist auction could spell a particularly sweet buying opportunity at next week’s Post-War auction.

Courtesy of Christie’s

The $60k estimate for this Gilbert & George offers a canny collector a buying opportunity. Sale proceeds will benefit the Brooklyn Museum, where the artistic duo had a solo exhibition in 2008.

Copyright 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our
Subscriber Agreement
and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit